POLS 170 - International Politics

Since the beginning of 2020 the United States has been in a complete disarray. The coronavirus, race riots, and political divisions have crippled this country in the last few years. Now as a global crisis unfolds we now find ourselves at a crossroads, to intervene in the Russo-Ukraine war or to take a isolationist stance on the matter. Although Ukraine is requesting support, I do not believe it is our place to intervene and I do not believe the issue is worth starting a third World War over. The biggest reason we should not engage is that President Putin is virtually threatening a nuclear war. Although Putin did not outright say he would launch nukes, he threatened the west with “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” if the Ukrainian invasion is interfered with. According to the New York Post, research suggests it would only take between ten and one hundred nuclear warheads to effectively destroy the environment. With their being around 15,000 nuclear bombs in exista...

International relations is characterized by both change and continuity, sometimes simultaneously. A fascinating illustration of this idea in current events is the predicament with Ukraine and Russia. The United States has been at odds (in varying degrees) with Russia and previously the Soviet Union, for over a century. The reasons for the animosity and distrust have varied, as well. One could make the argument that in modern international relations, negative feelings between Russia and the United States have provided continuity to the international politics of the United States and Russia. What has changed is how that looks within the political landscape of the U.S. interest. Even with Putin as a constant for almost twenty years (with the four year exception of Medvedev) the political machines within the United States have switched up in a dramatic way. For many decades, Republican presidents have been considered “hawk” administrations, ready for war. Republicans vote for troop deploym...

The question of needing the International Criminal Court has been debated for many years now. Recently, with the Russo-Ukrainian war currently taking place, the ICC has been in the news a fair amount. Political figures and commentators have predicted Vladimir Putin should/will be held accountable for the invasion of Ukraine at the ICC if defeated. The likelihood of this actually happening is extremely low, but the idea that it could happen is exactly why we need an international court system. Any given leader of any given country should not feel above the law in any way. When the world's most powerful leaders know that their actions will have consequences and they realize they will be held accountable, the world will ultimately be a safer place. The problem is that the ICC has not achieved this whatsoever. The ICC is extremely disorganized and not an actual threat to leaders of major world powers. The first problem is that the ICC has no authority or jurisdiction when it comes to...

  Cassie Lawler International Politics: POLS 170-03 Professor Shirk Due: Wednesday, March 23, 2022 Blog Post #3 The Inadequacies of International Law and the ICC In 2001, the International Criminal Court was created in an attempt to pick up where domestic law left off. International law’s purpose has since become convoluted as proponents of the anti-ICC viewpoint believe that the organization does not do enough to fulfill their mission. But above all else, the ICC was created on the basis of a few core tenets. These tenets include the promotion of peace and order in the world, advancement of human rights and protection, and fostering of stable and organized international relations. International law mimics domestic law in the sense that it is was founded upon the same fundamental principles but has such core differences that put the two forms of legal systems in entirely different arenas. On the most basic level, domestic law applies to citizens while international law is applicabl...

  Jack Cahalane Professor Shirk POLS 170 March 23, 2022 Blog Post #3 The United Nations The United Nations should be kept as a global institution, yet I believe there should be reforms to improve its effectiveness and legitimacy. In the article, “Legitimacy, Power, and the Symbolic Life of the UN Security Council,” by author Ian Hurd, the nature of the United Nations is discussed in length. One quote that stuck out to me was when he stated, “The power of social institutions in a society is largely a function of the legitimacy of those institutions. An institution that is perceived as legitimate by an individual is treated with more respect, is endowed with a corporate existence beyond the units that make it up, and finds compliance with its rules more easily secured than in the absence of legitimacy. International organizations seek legitimacy because they have problems in each of these areas” (Hurd 3). After reading this, I began to think about the legitimacy of the United Nat...

  Ingrid Hoopes 23 March 2022 POLS 170 In one of my previous Economics classes, we watched the movie A Beautiful Mind which is about John Nash’s evolution of Nash equilibrium, a component of Game theory. One particular scene in the movie shows John and his friends in a bar where he analyzes a situation with a blonde woman and her four brunette friends. John and his friends all want to go for the blonde woman, but he explains their chances with her through the perspective of game theory economics. He tells them that if all of the guys try to flirt with the blonde woman, they would be blocking each other’s chances and she would not go for any of them. If they then tried to talk to the brunette friends, they would have no luck there as well because no one likes being the second option. If all of the men talked to the brunette women first, then they would have a better chance at one of them being with the blonde, which is a higher chance than they had in the first place. This real-l...

  Blake Burchill 3/22/2022 Explaining Cooperation Under Anarchy Kenneth Oye The Global Cooperation Problem  In international politics, cooperation is essential for the well-being of all the states involved. In times of prosperity and peace, it is easy for states to cooperate with each other and make it so all parties stay at peace and also benefit economically. However, cooperation is much more important when there is anarchy. As stated by the article, “Relations among states are marked by war and concert, arms races and arms control, trade wars and tariff truces, financial panics and rescues, competitive devaluation and monetary stabilization”. When there is a conflict between states, there needs to be cooperation or more problems can occur . While it would seem like almost every conflict can be solved with mutual cooperation, the shadow of the future and the payoff structure gets in the way. This fact creates a structure that will make it very difficult for cooperation to oc...

  Drew Augustine Throughout history there have been many failed states that have been all over the world but there have been many in the Middle East and Africa. The reason for the downfall of failed states can differ but many of them revolve around the same concept. Oftentimes these states are very poor which makes it difficult to lead them, “Perh aps poverty leads to bad government because those with power want to grab for themselves whatever material goodies are available, or because poverty leads to low levels of education and thus a lack of understanding of the value of democratic and constitutional processes.” (Moore). Another reason a state may fail is because of so many rich countries throughout the world. That causes the leaders of countries that possess natural resources to loot their country and sell the resources for profit. With that money they can then buy weapons to defend themselves. Afghanistan is a failed state because of all these reasons as well as no governmen...

  Jack Cahalane Professor Shirk POLS 170 March 2, 2022 Blog Post#2 Russo-Ukrainian War In class we watched a clip from the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick and released in 1964. As a fan of Stanley Kubrick's work, I was surprised I had never seen nor heard of it before, yet the context in which it was filmed in still felt relevant to current events today. In the context of the movie, I looked to find what the Doomsday Clock was set at today discovering to be only 100 seconds from midnight, the closest it’s ever been. In relation to current events, it made me wonder what the Doomsday Clock would be at with the threat of Russian invasion in Ukraine. Less than a week ago, “President” Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation announced that nuclear forces have been put on high alert. This recent event marks the latest in a transpiring and escalating situation in Ukraine. Yet, it should be reali...

  Cassie Lawler International Politics: POLS 170-03 Professor Shirk Due: Wednesday, March 2, 2022 Blog Post #2 Russian Sanction’s on the Global Display The geopolitical landscape of society today is constantly evolving and since the onset of Russia’s war with Ukraine increasingly more complexities have arisen, making the situation even more convoluted, and a timely solution even more implausible. On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin set into motion a comprehensive invasion into Ukraine on the basis that Russia would be able to reclaim territory within the Soviet Union’s boundaries from before the Cold War. Violence, chaos, and bloodshed have since ensued. However, countries around the world have shown support for Ukraine, by way of sending military aid to Kyiv, weapons, and putting an abundance of sanctions against the state. These sanctions have done near the maximum amount of damage to Russia’s economy and indisputably have the potential to tear down the nation’...

Ingrid Hoopes 1 March 2022 POLS 170 The reading by Thomas C Schelling A world without nuclear weapons? presents an interesting dialogue about the safety of nuclear weapons within international relations and proposes different outcomes if they were to be eradicated. Realistically, getting rid of nuclear warfare globally could be even more detrimental to the safety and relationships of the nuclear weapons states. Schelling states that the meeting convened by the Stanley Foundation agreed that “global zero” is the global future objective. There are many reasons that this is unlikely to happen, which is a majority of Schelling’s argument, however, due to the recent events between Russia and Ukraine, it seems even more improbable. The proposal of total denuclearization is unrealistic because states are constantly in arms races; if there were to be the eradication, it could possibly trigger the opposite effect, making certain states feel the need to keep their power and become the highest...

  Blake Burchill International Politics Blog 3/1/22 A world without nuclear weapons?  Thomas C. Schelling Nuclear Weapons Create Peace In 1945, the US used its newly developed atomic bombs to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan which helped end World War II. This event changed global warfare forever. Since then, it has been the goal of major world powers to develop nuclear weapons of their own so they are not susceptible to attacks on their state. States like China, Russia, the US, and others felt that to keep their status as major military powers, they needed to produce nuclear weapons. This has led to conflicts like the Cold War where the US and the USSR were constantly threatening to use nuclear weapons on each other which luckily never ended up happening. In today's era, there are thousands of nuclear weapons hidden all over the world and even though there are no immediate threats of global destruction, there is still a fear of some state leaders using the weapons fo...